ArcaMax

My friend Myron from Montana asks me to take aim at the origin of "potshot."

In not-so-merry olde England, sportsmen followed very strict rules about what game animals could be hunted and when. Vigilant game wardens, wearing bright orange jumpsuits to avoid being shot and lugging thick manuals packed with regulations, patrolled the forests looking for violators.

But illiterate peasants, who simply wanted small pieces of meat for their stew pots, would often flout these rules by bagging animals out of season and killing immature animals.

Game warden to peasant: "Hey, it says here in subsection 26, paragraph 8, that you can't shoot that baby muskrat until the first mayfly is seen after St. Gregory's Day."

Peasant: "Sneck up, Govenuh! I needs some meats for me pot." Blam!

Such illegal shots were called "potshots," and, eventually, any unfair or unsportsmanlike attack came to be called a "potshot."

If we stir this medieval stew pot again, we'll discover the origin of "potluck."

Though travelers stopping at the castles of nobles were offered a choice of many fine meats, visitors to commoners' cottages took their chances with whatever happened to be simmering in the stew pot: baby muskrats, mayflies, St. Gregory himself. Thus "potluck" came to mean whatever item is available at a given time.

And now I offer personal confessions about two other "pots" of speech:

Confession No. 1: I've always assumed "potboiler," meaning an inferior literary work, was derived from the fact that writers of second-rate adventure novels tried to keep their plots boiling along to sustain readers' interest. In fact, potboilers are so called because authors write them primarily for money -- to keep pots of food boiling on their stoves.

Confession No. 2: I've always thought that "go to pot," meaning to come to ruin, referred to a plant's dying and falling back into its pot. In fact, this phrase is derived from the practice of throwing undesirable remnants of food into the stew pot. So anything that has degenerated or become inferior, such as my erroneous etymology, is said to have "gone to pot."

And now let's all go to "pot" -- specifically, to why marijuana is called "pot." It all started with Spanish phrase "potacion de guaya," a wine or brandy in which marijuana buds are steeped. This term was shortened to "potiguaya," and then to "pot," which entered American slang in the late 1930s. I'd like to end on a high note, but, alas, "potacion de guaya" means "drink of grief."

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Rob Kyff, a teacher and writer in West Hartford, Connecticut, invites your language sightings. His book, "Mark My Words," is available for $9.99 on Amazon.com. Send your reports of misuse and abuse, as well as examples of good writing, via email to WordGuy@aol.com or by regular mail to Rob Kyff, Creators Syndicate, 737 3rd Street, Hermosa Beach, CA 90254.

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